UFL Announcement - Why Not?

Michael Huyghue, UFL

Why has the UFL not announced yet? Or announced much of anything? Certainly one could argue that this is problematic - and I feel like that is partially true. If all were entirely well we would have heard the official announcement. I don’t think the league is in danger of not happening - although the potential certainly exists for kickoff to be pushed back to 2009. When I spoke with Michael Huyghue last month he said that would ONLY happen if they felt they could not get everything done in time for a proper kickoff in 2008. He mentioned that in some markets they would be putting down new fields, etc. He also told me that the league was ahead of where they expected to be. Perhaps he was blowing smoke - as they say down here in the South - and certainly that was spin to an extent, I’m certain, but I don’t doubt that the league has made significant progress towards kicking off.

Perhaps that doesn’t mean the league will kick off in August - or maybe the kickoff will occur later in August than originally intended. (August 8, 2008). After all, Huyghue told me if they could not line up eight teams then they would go with six teams and play a ten game regular season in year one before expanding to ten teams, fourteen games in year two.

Huyghue said that six ownership groups were in place with six stadiums lined up and a television deal in place. I see no reason why he would lie. The man is a credible public figure with a great resume in the football world - not a hype man with little substance like the CEO/commissioners of some other ventures from recent years that I will avoid mentioning here.

 

He told me they were working to line up the other two teams and that was the reason for the delay. Does that mean that is the entire reason for the delay? Probably not. Perhaps one of the ownership groups fell through, perhaps the television partner has been wavering. Unfortunately I haven’t heard much lately so we can only speculate as to the reason.

Billy Kirk, our glorious leader/editor [Editor’s Note: I sense some not-so-subtle hints of sarcasm. That’s coming out of your paycheck, Hahn], called the league office this morning and was told that the person who deals with media inquiries is out of town for a conference perhaps a conference related to the launch of the league, perhaps something unrelated. Again, speculation. We will continue to try to track down leads and information as we intend to keep you all well informed.

With that said, my understanding is that Michael Huyghue only wishes to announce things when they are absolutely locked down. I spoke with a partner to the league back in December who provided me with a lot of information on the progress of the league and commented that he had asked Huyghue to leak some of the information to help build buzz, but apparently this was not necessarily the direction in which the league wished to go. The league contemplated, for a time, announcing four teams/four ownership groups in December and announcing the others as they signed on - apparently the league decided to do a one time roll out. I don’t blame them for that, you only have one chance for a first impression, but it has been frustrating that other than our interview with the commissioner and a few mentions here and there news has been slow in coming.

A “slow” news leak occurred in Orlando, Vegas, and Los Angeles back in December in which ownership groups were mentioned and it was said that stadium deals were close to being signed - I have no reason to believe that those deals have not been reached just because the media hasn’t reported on it. Why would Sam Boyd Stadium - for instance - announce it to the media if the league didn’t ask them to do so? And because the league hasn’t been formally launched I doubt that the traditional media would go out of the way to track down information.

So, as a fan of alternative football leagues, I hope that the announcement is close to happening and that Huyghue was telling the truth when he told me things were locked down. This is a huge undertaking and it is easy to understand why things are slowly coming together - but that doesn’t mean that all is well, either.

We will find out soon enough. I promise you that we will do all we can to hunt down the information we are all looking for.

Nation Hahn @ February 21, 2008